I have no problems running businesses either and I'm playing with OFB since its release. I tried BRY and love it. That's it.
Like you said, fortunately, we're not all the same.

I love BRY too. It makes my non-selectable employees take care of their needs in a reasonably intelligent fashion instead of the usual Maxis way (I have to pee right now! I guess I'll go play pinball! ) I also like that BRY allows me to set what the boss does when I visit the business lot with another family. In a family-run business with no outside employees, the boss is the only one who appears at the business when other playables visit and I ususally want him/her to operate the cash register, not wander all over the lot trying to sell stuff to townies.

I don't mind mods that make sims run - they take forever to get anywhere at a normal walking pace (I wish there was something that would make playful sims skip). I do have the Fairly Paid Regulator, but don't use it much anymore. I prefer to use Change Wages under the Management menu since I like the relationship change that goes with it (an employee getting a pay increase should like the boss better and an employee getting docked should dislike the boss for it). It's easy enough to remember to change wages when I get the notice that an employee has gained a badge level.

@RoxEllen1965: Hahahaha... Employees... *If* I use employees - which, I must point out, almost never happens - I put in some Please Yourself Plants (made by Inge Jones, and found at Simlogical) - one to each employee -, set to keep their hunger, comfort, bladder and hygiene up in the green. I don't care about the other motives, and let those decay normally.

Usually though, my businesses are built to be run by just the owner or one of their household members. And occasionally, two household members are required. Cash registers are the worst, so I usually only have automated ones that need no personel.

And I think that a payment regulator (I use one from Paladin's Place) makes my life a bit easier. If I want a relationship to develop - which I usually do indeed - I'll just have my business owner strike up a chat with the employees in question, whenever there is time for it. Running or not running, if it doesn't work, any employee can be replaced.

Thank you very much, @Essa, for telling me. I have edited my original post to note that you later corrected my faulty assumption.


I have been pleased with FPR's function there, it's true. Does BRY not have such an equivalent? I always wondered whether it does that. Now I am curious also about the item BO mentioned that Paladin made, the one which he is describing keeps wages adjusted properly as well.

(ETA: That calendar you use sounds interesting too. I have a global mod that makes winter longer than the other seasons, though, so I assume it wouldn't work well for me---all four seasons together now take 22 days. But the concept is pretty neat!)



Well then, @BoilingOil, I would like to make a request to have Monique's Fairly Paid Regulator sign modded into a version that can also open and close the shop. Because I just remembered something else very helpful that it already does! I'll say more specifically in my reply to RoxEllen in this same post...but meanwhile, is it all right for me to make that request here, or do I need to register at one of your official sites to do so?

And thank you for the info on No Free Food. It seems like it ought to be a straightforward mod (I know that doesn't mean it *is*, just that I was hopeful it didn't bother to do more, since more would have been particularly unnecessary). Plus, dickhurt was thoughtful enough to allow baby bottles to always be taken from the fridge (bottles are always allowed, which means they can push the food count into negative numbers). Although not as realistic thus as it could be, it is a concession I think is reasonable for fun gameplay...plus you always make it up eventually, since you still have to stock the fridge to the point where you have a positive food count before any other food can be prepared.



Oh my gosh, @RoxEllen! You have reminded of yet another very useful feature that is exactly why I continue to use the FPR---it allows you to *instantly* assign sims on a business lot to be cashier, to restock, or to tidy up, using the Assign Job menu. Apparently just like BRY does...except that you do *not* have to be playing the lot as the owning household at the time!

This has been just lovely, because of course, owners mess around when you visit if you haven't set them to Be Cashier, including (for example) if the last thing they happened to do before you took them off the business lot was to restock. But with an FPR on the lot, when you visit the business with another family, you just click that FPR and assign the actual owner to Be Cashier; a visitor still gets the full menu and, believe it or not, can assign the owning family members. I was thrilled when I first noticed this. It means my owned retail businesses are always only a click away from being functional whenever visited. (But note that you can't assign a sim to do sales using the sign, just to those other three tasks.)

Have never tried assigning a sim who isn't part of the owning family to Be Cashier while visiting; no idea what might happen then, heh.

I was thinking too that if you do prefer for your business-owning sims (and their employees) to run, you can still just use Change Wages on the regular Maxis menu, as you mention. But then have the FPR on the lot, just to change their walk style as you wish. Like I said, the wage-change functions of the FPR are off by default already, so just having it there wouldn't cause it to start doing any of that.

ETA: My on-topic share: "Oh, crud. Now I have to wait until you're a toddler to rename you, don't I, since you can't "use" the batbox for that or anything else until you're at least that old?"
(Antonio Monty and his social-group townie wife, Regine, just had male twins. I named them Lucca and Marcello, although it occurred to me only a moment after I clicked to confirm this that I had just yesterday been thinking I wanted to use the name Stefan, or in this case Stefano, for a new baby boy. So once Marcello becomes a toddler, they shall become Lucca and Stefano. I like to stay with the apparent ethnic heritage of Maxis families!)

@natboopsie
I'd say that you can rename Marcello with the the Simmanipulator, it's easier than doing it with Simblender.
I can't say more about BRY and its wages feature as I don't use it. I know you can set it to ZQC (zero quit chance) which allows one to underpaid an employee. There are other settings but I don't get how to use them.

OT: "you really dislike children" to Andrée Granville-Carver. One of her traits is "dislike children". She married and mother of two. She recently had a baby boy. She spent the whole day without taking care of the poor thing. Fortunately her brother-in-low, Daniel, was passing by so he did. Claudia who is a child can entertain herself.

While I would have *liked* for the request to be made in the Garage at LeeFish.nl, I do not *require* that. I'm just happy that you did not request it in a PM.

And yes, ofcourse, I noticed that this object does not allow opening/closing the business, and I think that this is an omission of epic proportions. A cloned open/close sign should at least be able to open/close businesses as well. Even if only to prevent people from *being forced* to have multiple signs where one should be enough.



Good that you mention that. Allowing visiting sims from other households to have that many control options just feels wrong to me! Any mod that I stamp my name on, should not cheat that much, so I'm almost tempted to see if I can cut all that out...

On the other hand, I do agree that the owner should at least do something useful when you visit their business. Because I've been to Ramirez' furniture shop a few times, where Checo simply chose to play chess with some visitor, in stead of checking out the ever growing line of customers. VERY disturbing! But maybe the object could be made to automatically choose the best job for the owner.

• if there are no cash registers at all, because the business doesn't sell anything, the owner could tidy up
• if there are auto cash registers (either Inge's or mine), the owner could restock
• and otherwise, he could operate a cash register

But then again, I must admit that I'm not even sure that I can do all that. I'm just thinking out loud, here.

"You're a weird family sim, Fiona." My family sim Fiona rolls fears of having a baby almost every other day after having her quads, but her LTW is to have 6 children marry off. Since she's so persistent in not wanting any more kids, she'll probably only have the quads (unless there is an unexpected surprise... then it's her own fault!)
"Why do they just keep coming and coming..." Three kids brought home three different friends from school and two adults brought two different friends from work all in one go. This happened in a household of seven sims by the way.
"If you cancel out my action one more time I swear I will burn you alive." I get impatient with these sims a little too frequently.

"Hey, go apologize right now!"
"I love you"
"...Okay, so this time she started it, but go apologize anyway."
"Playing favorites, are we? Poor [unwanted twin]. This gives me strange suspicions of sexism, that "Oh, boy is so much more worth teaching than girl," but I know that it's really an unfortunate timing of wants thanks to how grow-ups refresh the wants panel and all... it still makes me frown."
"...SERIOUSLY?! You're MARRIED and HE'S MARRIED and you still wish you fell in love with him JUST BECAUSE he was your first date (which never would have happened were he not a darned pleasure sim or had I known how stupidly romantically inclined you were, although I really should have caught the hint when you kept on trying to kiss him when I was trying to keep the date completely platonic) and sheesh squash those feeling deep deep down and good girl for being satisfied with your husband I'm sorry it's too late, it was too late long ago even when you first made your wishes known...? I'm sorry, Catt, super sorry, I hope you lose those ridiculous notions later, I know that you're fine with your hubby and all, just let those passing wants.... PASS BY."

"Wow. This is your first time being home alone and not pregnant since...before Connor was conceived."
Mother of three with large age differences between her kids. The last one just aged up to child the day before the second aged up to teen, which is also what happened with the second and first.
She then rolled a want for another baby.
"I'm gonna say no. After all, your oldest is almost in college."
I've also been referring to the youngest, when he was a toddler, as "kidlet". "Go put kidlet in the high chair." "Go potty train kidlet."

"Oh....oh no. No..... NOOOOOOOOO!"

Me, when seeing Ginger Newson attempt to get her First Kiss - with her 'adopted' guardian, Herbert Goodie. Fortunately, he turned her down.

(I'd just moved the Newson kids in with the Goodies, they weren't officially adopted. You'd better believe I've now set Faith and Herb as Grandparents after that particular moment of horror.)

LMAO I had a similiar scene a few years ago when a couple lost their kids, and were re adopted by another family. So when the girl grew up the "ex" dad saw her and gave her that "you're HOT" look. They had three bolts. It was horrible, I was in shock. Like, REALLY in shock, my jaw left my mouth for a solid minute. x'D Since then when kids are re adopted I use the Simblender to asign their biological parents as aunt and uncle, so they are not their parents, but still are recognized as family or related by the game. It was really awkward.

Herbert Goodie seems to have that effect on many females

"y'know, someday... someday, i'll just set fire to you all. won't that be fun?"
"exCUSE ME!"
"i wonder if i have my old copy of sims 3 lying around.."
"i didn't completely reinstall my game for this TRASH."
"GOD--" (cue slamming of desk and me leaving the room)
"yeah, well, hopefully when i accidentally corrupt my game (again), YOU'LL be the house that gets the sack FIRST!"

i'm not a very calm person.

My Sims don't seem to have any problem with that... All 5 of this family's kids were close to graduating from university when Aida decided to pop out triplets... Yay, me!!!!

Thank you, Essa! That is quite a helpful reminder about my having other options. It's true, I'd only been renaming sims with the batbox's Debug Mode. I have Simblender too, so I'll check that next---and if I still need more, I'll try Sim Manipulator then.





Right, I think the FPR's ability to force owners to work the cash register during another family's visit, even if I forgot to set that up before the last time I left the business lot with the owner, is a crucial part of its function. In fact, I'd say keeping that feature, plus keeping the object's ability to make owning/employee sims run, are its two most important things to me---I'd rather have the FPR always be able to do those things than have it be able to open/close the business. Because to me, those two things are what make it a totally satisfactory alternative to having to put BRY in my game.

OT: "Yes, polka dots! You are the perfect fellow for that shirt." (Said to Crille Mifsud, a social-group townie who is newly Nervous Specter's live-in fiance, after having him try on some of my newest default-replacement shirts for men. This is why I love having a range of looks in my default-replacement clothing; my Playful and Sloppy sims, like Crille, need different styles than my Serious and Neat sims, even if all have equally high Interest levels in Fashion. Crille pairs his white polka dots on navy with a bright green bandanna over his blond hair, plus distressed jeans. And Nervous would never be caught dead in any of that...OK, maybe the jeans.)

"Love Sparrow?! Your name is Love Sparrow? - so appropriate." Said about a newly generated cheerleader that either throws hearts and swoons at half of the sims on a lot or has hearts thrown at her by half the dormies.

@stitching

I think you would have loved that character that I ran into in one of my games several years back. She was a randomly created, VERY slutty romance sim by the name of "Temperance Church". Not at all appropriate, if you ask me...

"Seriously!?" to Clio Morneau-Diop who is the local nightclub Smustle and Cie's DJ.
"Do you think you should woohoo your husband instead of entertaining the customers?"
She left the DJ booth to go to the photo-booth.

It could be worse. They could woohoo in the DJ Booth! It's probably for the best that can't happen. lol

Instead of? If the customers are anything like those in my games, they were plenty entertained.

"Stop fetishizing the lesbian, dammit!"
"Sorry, dear, that one's straight."

"I have so many regrets..."
"AW COME ON! Not in front of the baby! This'll scar him for life!"

This is sadly after I promised myself I'd let my sims handle their own personal interactions with each other. Meaning, I would stop canceling bad interactions or interfere with them.

So of course, Agnes, one of the young novices at a local almshouse, gets into a brawl with Beverly, the local midwife. All while my sim, Wesley, and his toddler, Ramsey, watched.

Why do you hate me, game?

Are you sure that's not your video card overheating? I had a near-identical issue a year or two ago when mine melted (not literally, of course). Had to get it replaced. Of course, it might just be a screwy mesh...

Screwy mesh. Starting it entirely over in Milkshape fixed it.

"I've never hated pixels as much as you Jessica! Go away!" Basically the burglar Jessica Ebadi came to rob my sim's house. Naturally my sim tackled her for a fight, only to have a miscarriage straight after because of the said fight. Now Jessica won't leave them alone and keeps calling them, and randomly appears so much in the neighborhood as if to mock me! She makes me so mad!
"Noah you're trying to kill him with laughter so you don't have to look after him, aren't you?" Noah spent over a sim hour just repeatedly tickling his friend's toddler instead of babysitting him.
"Where in worlds name did you go this time?" I have a household of seven and I'm terrible for not being able to find them.